EXTRA CREDIT Event #2: Media Art Nexus

I attended the Media Art Nexus talk in Broad Art Center with speakers Ina Conradi and Mark Chavez. There, I got a great understanding of some of the projects they were working on which had a lot of overlapping ideas with this class. This presentation will help me in forming final project ideas through expanding my horizons on different areas of the topics we covered in class, such as the topic of emotions and art which relate to the neuroscience section of the course.

I found the work of Chavez to be quite fascinating. He was involved in a lot of 3D modeling projects, and when his powerpoint showed models of the human head, I immediately thought of the Visible Human Project from the week on MedTech and Art. Even though Chavez doesn't have a background in any medical field, his skills and creativity built 3D models that allow society to advance our understanding of the human body.

Chavez's work with 3D modeling

Chavez also discussed a project he worked on where he built an artificially intelligent animation system. As I have broached the idea of working on robotics+art for my final project, this was super interesting to stumble upon. The one thing that robots can't exhibit is original thought or creativity, but with this AI animation system, we are truly beginning to replace human skill in every possible way! We are creeping closer to robot world domination as people like David Hanson create robots that can have facial expressions that mimic humans and Hod Lipson creates machines that can figure out their own form and learn how to navigate in their "bodies."

Chavez's slide on AI animation systems

Proof of attendance

Sources

“The National Library of Medicine's Visible Human Project.” U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, 10 Apr. 2018, www.nlm.nih.gov/research/visible/visible_human.html.

Hanson, David. "Robots That 'Show Emotion.'" TED, Feb 2009, www.ted.com/talks/david_hanson_robots_that_relate_to_you

 Lipson, Hod. "Building 'Self-Aware' Robots." TED. Mar 2009, www.ted.com/talks/hod_lipson_builds_self_aware_robots#t-185719




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